From Broke to $2.8M: The Rork Viral Tweet Story

Rork's Remarkable Journey: From Debt to $2.8 Million

The story of Rork’s founders, Levan Kvirkvelia and Daniel Dhawan, reads like a compelling narrative – yet it is a true account of their experiences.

Initially facing financial hardship, with depleted savings and a collective $15,000 in credit card debt, the pair managed to achieve $100,000 in revenue within just five days. Dhawan was even residing on a mattress at a friend’s residence during this challenging period.

Securing Seed Funding

This rapid success culminated in a $2.8 million seed round, spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz’s Speedrun program. Additional investors quickly joined, including Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund, ChapterOne, Founders Inc., Austen Allred, Charlie Cheever and Evan Bacon from Expo, Siqi Chen of Runway, and others.

The catalyst for this surge was a single tweet highlighting Rork’s innovative mobile app development product, which subsequently went viral.

Rork empowers individuals lacking extensive technical expertise to construct mobile applications using straightforward text prompts.

The Launch and Initial Struggles

On February 12th, following months of development and a strategic pivot, Kvirkvelia and Dhawan officially launched Rork via a tweet.

“We were truly the underdogs, and our financial resources were dwindling rapidly,” Dhawan explained to TechCrunch.

They had previously secured a modest investment from Matt Shumer, the co-founder and CEO of OthersideAI, the company behind the AI writing tool HyperWrite.

While their initial tweet garnered some attention, it wasn’t until February 24th, amidst discussions surrounding a competing product from Bolt, that significant traction occurred.

The Viral Tweet and Investment Flood

Shumer posted on X, expressing his belief that Rork surpassed Bolt in functionality.

“I was absolutely astonished,” Shumer wrote. “Rork enables the creation of complete iOS applications simply through descriptive text! No coding is necessary. This fundamentally alters the landscape of app development. Rork significantly outperforms Bolt (and I invested immediately after testing it).”

Shumer’s post, accompanied by a Rork demonstration video, rapidly gained over 1 million views.

Consequently, Rork’s usage experienced an immediate and substantial increase. However, the founders were still grappling with substantial personal debt.

“We were essentially funding the AI costs ourselves, as we hadn’t secured significant funding,” Dhawan stated. “We were nearing financial exhaustion. Then, just 15 minutes after Shumer’s post, Austen Allred invested $100,000.”

Rapid Funding and Future Prospects

By the end of the day Shumer’s tweet was posted, Founder’s Inc. and Elizabeth Yin from Hustle Fund were prepared to invest. Introductions to other investors and angel investors followed quickly. “Essentially, we secured $350,000 on that first day, which was incredibly fast-paced.”

Facing Financial Strain

Despite initial indications of success – and quantifiable metrics supporting this – the company’s origins were rooted in a critical need for financial rescue for its founders.

This represented the third venture undertaken independently by each founder, building upon prior experience developing successful mobile applications since their teenage years. Currently, their ages are 25 (Kvirkvelia) and 27 (Dhawan).

However, substantial portions of the revenue generated from these earlier applications had been invested in the development of Rork’s precursor, a code generation tool aimed at users without extensive technical expertise, similar in concept to Cursor.

Dhawan had established a presence in San Francisco in December to participate in Founders Inc. and pursue fundraising efforts, continuing through the holiday season and utilizing temporary lodging – a mattress in the apartment of a fellow YC founder – while Kvirkvelia remained in Georgia focused on building the new product. Securing funding proved challenging.

The launch of competitor Lovable, which rapidly gained viral traction, presented a further obstacle. Rork’s product was not yet prepared to effectively compete. Dhawan recounts, “We had completed the prototype, and then they launched,” expressing their disappointment.

Consequently, Kvirkvelia persuaded Dhawan to pivot their strategy. Instead of attempting to replicate Lovable’s approach to AI-powered web coding, they decided to leverage their expertise and create a comparable solution for mobile app development.

This approach was largely unexplored – and with good reason – as mobile app development, even more so than web development, is considerably complex, as Kvirkvelia explained to TechCrunch.

“We function as the Lovable equivalent for Expo and React,” Kvirkvelia stated, referencing two widely used mobile app development frameworks.

The subsequent launch of Bolt, another startup offering a mobile code generation product, triggered a sense of déjà vu, with the founders fearing they would once again be preempted in the market. They responded by launching on the same day as Bolt, Dhawan confirmed.

Following the widespread dissemination of Shumer’s tweet and the influx of angel investors, one of these investors facilitated an introduction to Andrew Chen, a general partner leading Andreessen Horowitz’s new Speedrun program. Speedrun is a 12-week mentorship initiative by a16z designed for early-stage startups, offering benefits such as $5 million in credits from partners like AWS, Google Cloud, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Stripe, and Deel, alongside potential investments up to $1 million.

Chen initiated contact, but Dhawan initially hesitated, informing Chen of an existing pre-seed term sheet from another firm. Undeterred, Chen expedited the internal review process at his firm and swiftly presented a competitive offer. The Rork founders accepted the offer, secured their seed funding, and are scheduled to participate in the cohort beginning on July 28.

“Daniel and Levan possess a rare combination of technical skill and a deep understanding of mobile development and distribution, enabling them to rapidly construct a remarkable platform,” Chen communicated to TechCrunch via email. “They embody the type of founders we are eager to support through a16z Speedrun.”

Importantly, beyond the funding, the company is experiencing substantial user adoption. Just two months after Shumer’s tweet went viral, the two-person team achieved an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $550,000, according to Dhawan.

Furthermore, Dhawan has secured permanent housing, moving out of temporary accommodations.

Please note: this article has been updated to clarify that it was Dhawan, and not Kvirkvelia, who was initially residing on a mattress on the floor.